How to maintain long-distance friendships

Long-distance relationships with old friends are vital to your wellbeing and require a special kind of TLC, says communications professor Amy Janan Johnson.

For emotional support

Do you hardly ever speak to your best friend from primary school anymore? Has it been years since you last saw your college roommate? Old friendships can easily fade when you’re living abroad, but it pays to hang on to them. The University of Oklahoma professor explains: because long-time friends tend to “know you more deeply than new, geographically close friends, they may be in a better position to provide you emotional support, especially in a time of crisis”. For example, if your mum were to get sick, chances are your best friend from the International Women’s Club doesn’t know her, but your childhood buddy definitely will.

Go beyond social media

Johnson offers three tips for successfully maintaining long-distance relationships with old friends. First of all: don’t overly rely on social media. “Just because you’re updating your Facebook doesn’t mean that you are maintaining your friendship,” she says. Research shows that talking on the phone is what actually leads long-distance friends to grow in closeness. Visiting each other is also valuable: “It gives you a chance to renew that friendship and build some new memories with that friend,” explains Johnson.

Keep current

Her next tip: keep your friendship in the here and now. “One thing a lot of people do is they kind of reminisce about the fun times that they had together, and that helps them remember how close they were in the past,” she says. “But if you want to keep an active friendship, you have to move beyond what you interacted with in the past and build and help each other keep up-to-date with what you’re doing currently, too.” So use your conversations to really share what’s going on in your lives.

Stay honest

Finally, Johnson advises to speak to long-distance friends as if they were living around the corner. She explains: “We tend to be kind of on our best behavior when we are communicating with them, and we tend to avoid conflict.” And that doesn’t necessarily help the relationship. “If you avoid conflict, it’s more likely that friendship is just going to kind of fade away, especially since you don’t see them on a regular basis,” she says.


Source: motto.time.com

Photo: Chelsea Marie Hicks – Flickr

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